Thursday, June 27, 2013

Today, an airplane is nothing without its avionics. The same can be said for process without events. Processes have come a long way in that they are quite agile and becoming more dynamic in their configurations, but they are flying blind without events. If processes can’t sense when changes are needed, all that agility goes to waste. When businesses are flying at high speeds, they need to know what events (threats or opportunities) to pay attention so they can adjust to get to their desired outcomes. Your culture is going to change because of being in a more event driven world, See http://www.thetibcoblog.com/2013/06/27/events-are-the-chocolate-to-process-peanut-butter/ for more detail

Imagine coordinating the flight crews, passengers, food service crews, cleaning crews, gates, ground crews for a complex and large airport. Next imagine getting only 30 minutes notice to plan and react to events (airplane status) in a very dynamic ground logistics game. This is exactly what Inttelligent BPM does for one of the major Euro based airports.

The Solution:

BPM was used to visualize where each plane was and where each of the servicing crews were as well as route all of the crews to optimally turn airplanes around quickly to save time and fuel costs. The on time performance was raised from 57% to 85% and the revenue from the retail experience was raised because of having more passenger time in the stores. This allowed more flights per time corridor as well. A real "win-win-win"

How Smart is this Process Measured by the CPIQ?

Net; Net:
You can visually see where the intelligence of this process is more advanced.

This is a highly summarized and anonymous case study provided by Pegasystems

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

It has been a hectic quarter with retiring from Gartner, establishing a new blog and starting a new book with some strong authors. Despite all the activity and getting back to regular exercise program, I was able to finish some art projects. I decided to pick up water color painting, so this is my first water color entitled "Stone Spirits".

Also, I had a chance to create some new fractals for fun as well. I hope you like them the first one is entitled "Quasar".

With today's powerful BPM technology and executive management's appetite for wanting better business outcomes, we are facing a wave of unprecedented change at warp speed. With the latent demand for change and the powerful BPM capabilities the newest challenge is to implement change without casualties. People hate change and put up roadblocks without careful approaches.

If you want a regret free change program (no casualties), there are some very good principles to apply process efforts that range from simple to transformational change. Good leadership enacts change by leveraging the following principles:

Consistency:

A good leader communicates consistently about the chance and "the good" that would come from it. If the going gets tough, this leader calmly persists and tunes the change to circumstances. Sometimes leaders are tempted to force a change because it is just a gut feeling. Even if it is, the desired outcomes need to be repeated consistently. When people start seeing the results, a tipping point will occur.

Sensitivity:

A good leader makes sure that many points of view are anticipated and prepared for in advance of the change. It is easy to say "get on board or get out of the way" and act out of power and force. A really good leader will reach to people where they are despite the pressures that are on a leaders shoulders

Patience:

A good leader will understand that changes are complex and have many parts. There will be parts of the change that move fast and others that will lag. A good leader will know what parts require more time and understand that several approaches will be needed, such as visual incentives and logic.

Intelligence:

People are pretty smart and they want to understand that the change will be good for the organization and the very customers they serve. A good leader will show evidence of success in other contexts or show a simulation of alternatives over a long period of time.

Friday, June 7, 2013

This is a case study I have been dreaming of hearing about some day. In the past, I have written about how scenario planning would no longer be optional. This trumps that idea and puts legs to proactively testing business change and even transformation before an organization moves to rapid implementation. This is a real life example of business model resilience mentioned in this blog posting http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-triple-threat-of-simulation.html

This is a story about a large medical provider that was aimed at providing better patient care, lower costs and a lift in our nations health overall. These goals have been in conflict before, but by using business simulation, guided by visual systems dynamics models projected over 40 years, several best balance scenarios were identified. This allows for a broader understanding of decisions and their actions over time.

Believe it or not, healthcare in the U.S. – on both local and national levels – is not simply controlled by a faceless entity, masked behind bureaucracy, and seemingly out of touch to all but the most powerful. Many entities share a stake in the direction of healthcare, but few understand that they are not alone – that there are great (often mutual) benefits to cooperation that impact everybody. One of the largest healthcare stakeholders in the U.S. understands this, and they recently selected simulation to create a way of bringing other stakeholders together to develop collective decisions that improve the healthcare system

The Desired End Game:

The vision is to improve healthcare on both local and national levels. You might ask, “What does it mean to improve healthcare?” When people become sick, they incur healthcare costs due to treatment, medicine, etc. In the most basic form, the best means of improving a healthcare system is to promote preventative healthcare – typically via education, routine primary care, vaccinations, screenings, and other methods – which, in turn, reduces the amount of sickness among the population.
“Great,” you may reply, “but how do we influence stakeholders to take steps to enrich and expand preventative care, thereby improving the healthcare system?” This organization knows that improving healthcare is a monumental task in the long term, but setting up the framework for success by bringing the right people together to learn is, in the short term, quite feasible. In response to this, the organization and Simudyne worked together to create the Healthcare Education Simulator (HES).

What is HES?

HES is a computer simulation at the center of an educational experience designed to teach healthcare stakeholders who else has influence in the system, what methods of cooperation exist, and how different “interventions” impact individual stakeholders and the system as a whole. Simudyne and this organization collaboratively developed the “brain” within HES as an adaptation of the system dynamics model and related work completed by Bobby Milstein, PhD, MPH of ReThink Health/Rippel Foundation and Kim Warren, PhD of Strategy Dynamics Ltd.

“So, we have all of this fancy data. Now what?” Believe it or not, despite the complexities of the sophisticated HES engine and the precision of the healthcare data outputs, this organization facilitates the educational experience in such a way that communication, collaboration, and networking are the primary takeaways from the experience. Of course, the data must be accurate in order to give HES credibility as a useable healthcare simulation, but this organization keeps its vision in focus by bringing in stakeholders from various professional areas – providers, payers, employers, etc. – and teaching them that there are myriad opportunities to work together (considering that, in the real world, these stakeholders typically make decisions independently). All-in-all, HES serves as the platform upon which strangers in the healthcare system meet, learn from each other, and plan to collaborate in the future with the intent of both achieving mutual benefit and improving the system as a whole.

As participants begin to learn from HES, we are reminded of the importance of simulations in learning and decision-making processes. Simulations like HES immerse users and offer additional perspectives to solving complex problems; they “shine light” on problems by transcending pen & paper, spreadsheets, and other traditional means of prediction and analysis. HES literally invites users into a virtual world and gives them something to remember, and time will tell us of the value of the decisions they make and the relationships they build as a result of the Healthcare Education Simulator experience.

Net; Net:

Flight simulators save lives over time; ask any airline pilot. The same can be said for business survival at in a context that allows others to thrive. This allows us to move to a "win - win" set of behaviors that does not sub-optimize on any one role or organizational unit.

This is a highly summarized and anonymous case study provided by Simudyne

Thursday, June 6, 2013

For those of you that are trying to manage agility to respond to business needs will run into business rule managment issues. This book give a great foundation to understand business rules and it is worth the time and money to read.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Most organizations really do not understand the power of simulation and how simulation has moved forward in recent years. There are strategic reasons as well as practical operational reasons to employ simulation. There is a strong trend towards using simulation for more intelligent business operations and testing alternative business models. Simulation has become easier to use and the methods have matured to enable todays' business professionals.

The three uses of simulation that have momentum today are as follows.

Process Design:

In recent years, using simulation for testing process models before they are implemented was a major stream of activity. Organizations are able to optimize flows and resource utilization rates ahead of time instead of learning through managing a process by the "seat of the pants" once the process is running in production. Organizations that have a planning culture tend to test models before running them in production. However, not all organizations have a planning culture, so the next area of expansion for simulation was process optimization using real results and projecting the impact of reactive or proactive changes.

Intelligent Business Operations:

Most recently, organizations are not only using simulations to optimize individual processes, but they are looking to broader scopes to optimize crucial operations of their business. This can include large and wide ranging processes or combinations of multiple process and applications. Quite often simulation is combined with poly analytics and visual dashboards/scorecards to give a more visually rich and scientifically based approach. This engages stakeholders and they start realizing the potential of try different approaches to deliver intelligent business operations. This is optimization at a large scale

Business Model Resilience:

Because or the complexity and volatility of business conditions, simulation is playering a bigger and broader role for organizations. Simulation allows business executives to test their current business models under different business scenarios at a minimum and design new transformational business models at the maximum. This approach to projecting change and conditional business responses requires combining simulation with system dynamic models or agent models to show the interaction of uncontrolled resources in interaction mode.

Net; Net:

Simulation is vastly misunderstood and under appreciated. This trend is turning and simulation is growing from under utilized to a force that organizations can employ to deliver smart businesses. I will be documenting successes going forward for your reading and hopefully enjoyment :)

Create a highly individualized shopping experience for customers while taking inventory levels and special situations in mind. For clients in the area of the store, with registered cell phones, invite them in with specials that relate to the clients potential needs/wants leveraging known information to increase revenue.

The Solution:

Determine the physical location of the customer, in the store, and push offers related to the location. For instance, if the client is in the men's department looking at ties, offer a coupon for shoes or men's scents. In the case where the mobile opportunity is not available, print related offers on the back of the receipt of current purchases. This has increased revenue, reduced inventory, pushed slower lines into the fast lane. This is an impressive business solution that leverages process.

How Smart is this Process Measured by the CPIQ?

Net; Net:
You can visually see where the intelligence of
this process is more advanced.

This is a highly summarized and
anonymous case study provided by Tibco